Thank You and Goodnight...

If we don't change, we don't grow.
If we don't grow, we aren't really living.
-GAIL SHEEHY-

So an Anonymous, But Fairly Nice Person just posted a very fair question to my blog.

"So this blog is pretty much dead, right?" they asked.

And it occurs to me that this person deserves a thoughtful response. If only because there's a single person out there who enjoyed what I put here, I genuinely appreciate that. I don't know. Maybe there's more of you lurking out there in the shadows, who might similarly wonder why I'm so silent. I thought a formal response might be in order.

Without making any sort of formal decision, I've decided to retire this blog. A couple of different factors have all come together to make this an inevitable decision. And a single inciting incident put it all into a clear perspective for me. I feel that this decision is inevitable.

Here's why I've decided to close the doors here...

First, I've undergone a bit of a job change. Working at the theater produces a different work-load for me, than previous jobs. When I first started this blog, I was working at a housing firm and I could spare an hour or so, a day, to write out a long, lengthy blog post. Something worth reading. I started THIS job in October, 2007 and initially I was sequestered downstairs, alone with my good friend, Jenn Kincaid. That allowed me some time to blog an occasional entry or two. But when, in August of last year, I got moved upstairs, right outside my bosses office, the end was in sight. It's difficult to produce a coherent thought when my old boss is around, much less produce any written work of any value.

Backstage, here at the blog, I probably have three dozen unfinished blog entries from August to now. I would start an entry, get three paragraphs in and then get pulled away by the work, unable to return. Those entries will just live backstage, never to see the light of day.

And it made it pretty clear that office hours are not good hours for blogging anymore.

Second, I originally began this blog as a response to a social change at my favorite social networking site, CIN. An online discussion forum for Chicago improvisers. A place where all of my favorite people met up to make jokes, post funny pictures and explore extended, online bits. Good times.

But then, some real douchebags in the improv community took over and made it clear that I (and a few others) were not welcome there and I decided to leave that board, rather than stick around and wait to be tossed out, publicly.

So, I started a blog. To have a creative outlet. And as a place to record the memories of my life here and my childhood, that I feared that I would lose to time. Of course, the more I wrote, the more I wanted to explore other things. I had a t-shirt contest once. I played elaborate jokes on people. I treated the blog like a newsletter about me, published for free, to anyone who wanted to read it.

And generally speaking, it was no holds barred. Everything was up for discussion. My past. My mistakes. My anxieties. My plans. My sexuality. My friends. Everything was open for discussion. With one caveat, I tried to keep my current romantic relationships down to a minimum. Girlfriends would feature in an entry, but they were participants in an adventure and less deconstructions of my actual relationships. Well, that was my intention, anyways. I can see that I didn't exactly manage to avoid it, all the time.

But with the addition of Facebook, I have a community of friends to interact with again. CIN, for all intents and purposes, is dead. The douchebags all fled in a single move and then a new crop of posters popped up and I think for some of us old-timers, it was a little depressing to hear the same old questions asked over and over again. And to notice the slow, quiet silence of old friends who didn't visit the boards anymore. As it turns out, all of those old friends are on the Facebook (in some capacity) so that's a good place for me to visit with them.

CIN no longer serves any function.
In the same way, my blog is less necessary as a refuge.

One more thing happened here, that is worth mentioning. I think it's relevant to my decision to close the doors here.

In late January of this year, oh, a month and a half ago, now, I had a really bad birthday. By sheer bad luck, the people that I am closest with were almost entirely unavailable. (Not everyone. I had a few close friends out for my birthday.) Let's just say that there were some faces that I was missing.

And there was a girl that I fancied a bit and that pretty much fell apart, right in front of my eyes, at the party.

And there was another girl that I had no interest in, whatsoever, who waited until I was too drunk to defend myself, before shoving her hands down my pants and molesting me.

And my solution to this terrible set of unfortunate circumstances, was the exactly wrong one. I walked calmly up to the bartender and asked him to knock me unconscious with booze. He obliged me. I even took the rare opportunity to allow my deejay to smoke weed with me, outside. So, I was functionally retarded, by the time I left the bar. Drunk, high, being molested by the exactly wrong person and feeling terribly, terribly lonely.

When I got home, it got worse. Joe was away at his fiance's apartment, as he is most nights now. The dog was happy to see me and that was a small comfort. I got home and I changed into my pajamas and went out on the couch to sit down, a whirlwind of self-destructive thoughts raging in my head. I sat down calmly on the couch and had myself a little bit of a breakdown.

I started crying a little bit.
And then I cried a lot.
And then the floodgates opened and I fell over into a fetal position and openly wept.

I questioned everything. I analyzed all of my recent decisions. I questioned all of my big life choices too. Who I was. How I got there. Where I was going. What I'd done wrong. I focused pretty hard on what I'd done wrong. In fact, I would say that was a central theme of the whole meltdown - the things I'd done wrong in my life.

Believe it or not, this stupid, silly little blog was a part of all of that. I felt ashamed that I thought that this blog was anything of value. I felt embarrassed that I'd ever opened up the doors for the general public to view it. It felt like the ridiculous and pathetic height of hubris to assume that I had anything of value to say and even worse, the tone-deaf expectation that anyone would want to hear what I had to say.

I mean, who does this? Who lives their lives so publicly? Who enforces such an artificial audience/ performer relationship on the people in their lives?

It just seemed to shallow and so vain and absolutely unforgivable.

To be clear, at the same time that I was questioning the purpose for this blog, I also decided that I had shamed my mother and that she probably only pretended to love and support me, when she really would like for me to just act like a normal person for once. So, I might've been trolling around off the deep end, a little bit there.

I cried myself to sleep on the couch. Alone in a ramshackle apartment that I hate. Surrounded by a larger city that I love. But as isolated as any man could feel.

The next morning, the hangover eventually went away, but the questions I asked myself stuck around. And I knew, without absolute certainty, that this was a dying proposition. I was probably going to end this blog, some time soon.

I was at the end of this two year experiment.

Some very good friends, Ian, Crescent, Kyle, Paul and Todd have expressed a genuine interest in this blog and what I have to say. For them, I tried to bake up a few verbal pies, between the end of January and now. But let's face it, they weren't very good. To them, and to anyone else out there that I don't know about, I encourage you to open other doors of communication with me. Come and participate with me in the half-hoakum stories that you read about here for a short time. There is always a place at my table for anyone who wants one. In any social setting. You're always welcome. (Even if you shove your hands down my pants when I'm too drunk to defend myself. Strike that, especially when you shove your hands down my pants when I'm too drunk to defend myself.)

I can feel myself standing on the edge of making some big decisions for myself. I am coming up on 9 years of being in Chicago. I feel like there are things here that I've not pursued, that I genuinely want. I feel like I am running out of time. I feel like I better get a move on, if I want to get things done. I feel like I am on the threshold of living somewhere else now, even if I don't know where that somewhere else is, just yet.

I also feel like this dumb zombie musical, might be my swan song. The last thing I direct or produce for a good while. I am enjoying the whole process, but there seems to be an imperceptible air of finality about this project. So, I'm accepting that and working with the assumption that there are other things for me, beyond this. Perhaps just not in the theatrical arts. The unforeseen challenges will be undertaken privately, without public documentation. Some of you will know well about them, because you'll likely be directly involved.

I guess this is the end bit here. Where I end things out.

Please allow me to thank you, whoever you are, wherever you are, for the times that you checked in here and read my dumb blog posts. Thank you for the very funny, kind responses. Thank you for playing along with me and humoring me, when necessary. And thank you for the lovely, private ways that you shared your lives with me. Sincerely, thank you.

So, leave a comment or two if you fancy it, close your web browser and let's meet up at the bar some time to share a laugh or two.

It will be good to talk about what I'm up to without two or three people saying, "We know this already. We read your blog."

It will be good to focus on living life, as it happens. Without partially checking out to make mental notes of a record that I want to eventually make of the event.

It will be good.

Cheers,
COB

"So goodnight, boys, goodnight!"
-The Decemberists-
-Shanty for the Arethusa.-